Heraclitus

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Dogs, also, bark at what they do not know.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ἡράκλειτος, Herakleitos; c. 535 BC – 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the Cosmos.

This statement occurs in Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1313.11; while some sources attribute to Simplicius the coining of the specific phrase "πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei)", meaning "everything flows/is in a state of flux", to characterize the concept in the philosophy of Heraclitus, the essential phrasing "everything changes" and variations on it, in contexts where Heraclitus's thought is being alluded to, was current in both Plato and Aristotle's writings.

δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.

You could not step twice into the same river.

As quoted in Plato, Cratylus, 402a

τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατ' αὐτήν.

Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world.

From Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, Book IX, section 8

αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.

Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free. (G. T. W. Patrick, 1889)

Hippolytus, Ref. haer. ix. 9 (Fragment 53). Context: "And that the father of all created things is created and uncreated, the made and the maker, we hear him (Heraclitus) saying, 'War is the father and king of all,' etc."

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle. (G.T.W. Patrick, 1889)

"The passage is restored as above by Bernays (Heraclitea i. p. 34), and Bywater (p. 43), from the following sources:

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

Fragment 10

Variant translation: From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.

Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.

Fragment 12

ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον, οὐκ ἐξευρήσει

He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.

Fragment 18, as quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 105

Variants:

He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out.

The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 129

He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it, since it is trackless and unexplored.

As quoted in Helen by Euripides, edited by William Allan (2008), p. 278

Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.

Rendering ἐὰν μή "unless" is more English-friendly without being inaccurate. As for the last clause, the point is that you can neither find it nor navigate your way through it. The alpha-privatives suggest using similar metaphoric adjectives to keep the Greek 'feel.' (S. N. Jenks, 2014)

This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.

Fragment 30

Variant translations: The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished. This world . . . ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measure going out.

That which always was,and is, and will be everlasting fire,the same for all, the cosmos,made neither by god nor man,replenishes in measureas it burns away.

Translated by Brooks Haxton

ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

Variant translations: Listening not to me but to reason, it is wise to agree that all is one. Listening not to me but to the Word it is wise to agree that all things are one. He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one.It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.

The word translated in these quotes and many others as "The Word" or "Reason", is the greek word λόγος (Logos).

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή

The road up and the road down is one and the same.

Fragment 60

Variant translations: The road up and the road down are one and the same. The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same. The way up and the way down are one and the same.

ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη, χειμὼν θέρος, πόλεμος εἰρήνη, κόρος λιμός

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

Fragment 111, as translated by G.W.T. Patrick

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

Fragment 114

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων

Character is destiny.

Fragment 119

Variant translations: Character is fate. Man's character is his fate. A man's character is his fate. A man's character is his guardian divinity.One's bearing shapes one's fate.

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.

Attributed to "Hericletus c. 500 B.C." [sic] in The Tactical Rifle (1999) by Gabriel Suarez; no earlier source has been found.

I walked on to the next corner, sat on a bench at a bus stop, and read in my new book about Heraclitus. All things flow like a river, he said; nothing abides. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing ever changed, it only seemed so. Both views appealed to me.

In other countries, too, the idea of a creation was sternly rejected, as, for instance, by Heraclitus, who declares that no god and no man made this world, but that it was always and is and will be, an eternal fire, assuming forms and destroying them. And this protest, it should be remembered, came from a man who was able to say with equal honesty that 'God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger—and that he is called according to the pleasure of every one.'

If the flow is steady, the field velocity vectors and the system of streamlines remain unaffected by the progress of time. Looking at the vector field and its streamlines we do not notice any change. Yet if we could distinguish the different particles of fluid from each other, we could observe incessant change...We have here two aspects of a steady flow, one of unchanging persistence, the other of incessant change. ...Heraclitus was called the "Dark Philosopher"; his views of human affairs were sombre and his sayings obscure. ..."You cannot look twice at the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in.""We look and do not look at the same rivers; we are, and we are not."What is the intended meaning of these sentences? I do not venture to find out. Yet I think that the originator of these senteces came pretty close to formulating the concept "steady flow of a fluid."

When... Heraclitus names the world an ever-living fire that... extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when... all is exchanged for fire and fire for all... he can only understand by this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmuting, and equally (in heat) all-vivifying element, represents the constant force of this eternal alteration and transformation, the notion of life, in the most vivid and energetic manner. ...the means of which the power of motion that is precedent to all matter avails itself for the production of the living process of things. Heraclitus... explains the multiplicity of things... [fire] condenses itself into material elements, first air, then water, then earth. ...These two processes of extinction and ignition... alternate... in perpetual rotation with each other and... in stated periods the world resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-create itself out of it again. ...[F]ire is to him... the principle of movement, of physical as of spiritual vitality; the soul itself is a fiery vapour; its power and perfection depend on its being pure from all grosser and duller elements.

If neither sub-atomic particles nor organic species exemplify the 'permanent entities' of Greek metaphysics, what else in the real world does so? ...Two hundred years of historical research have had their effect. Whether we turn to social or intellectual history, evolutionary zoology, historical geology or astronomy—whether we consider explanatory theories or star-clusters, societies or cultures, languages or disciplines, organic species or the Earth itself—the verdict is not Parmenidean but Heraclitean. As we now understand it, nothing in the empirical world possesses the permanent unchanging identity which all Greek natural philosophers (the Epicureans apart) presupposed in the ultimate elements of Nature. So, if we... are to entertain metaphysical thoughts about the nature of things-in-general consistent with the rest of our late-twentieth-century ideas, we must explore the consequences of the modern, post-Darwinian or 'populational' approach, as applied not just to species, but to historical entities of all kinds. Confronted with the question, 'How do permanent entities preserve their identity through all their apparent changes?', we must simply deny the validity of the question itself. In its place, we must substitute the question, 'How do historical entities maintain their coherence and continuity, despite all the real changes they undergo?'